(Quiriquire, Venezuela, 1937 - Paris, France, 2019)

Francisco Salazar’ enrolled in Architecture at the Central University of Venezuela. His brief studies led him to gain interest in spatial relationships and pure forms, and in the late nineteen sixties he transformed it into his own path in Kinetic Art, focusing on luminous and optical phenomena. The exploration of ruptures, continuities in space and their respective impacts upon perception of spectators made him choose corrugated carton as one of his main work materials, which allowed him to establish tridimensional reticular patterns as base.

Painting, as well as the reliefs produced by cutting the carton helped generate various interplays with light, which Salazar transformed into Kinetic dynamics, like vibrations given with perception. The diverse interactions between shadows, the repetition of patterns, and the space where the work is placed translate into virtual movements anchored upon abstraction. With this, the artist sought to highlight the connections between the notions of empty and full space; his preference for monochromatism emerged from the necessity to modulate light as precisely as possible in order to radically differentiate both kinds of space at the same time that he brought them together.